Released in 3-D and set in Samoa (filmed in Hawaii),
Miss Sadie Thompson is a watered-down adaptation of
Somerset Maugham's Rain. It was originally a stage
play (starring the legendary Jeanne Eagels) and filmed
three times before with such noted actresses as Gloria
Swanson and Joan Crawford. Raoul Walsh's silent being
the best and this Curtis Bernhardt
("Possessed"/"Conflict"/"Devotion") being the least
effective. The screenplay by Harry Kleiner keeps
things pointless and uninspiring. This semi-musical is
mainly a star vehicle for Rita Hayworth, who plays the
good-time unapologetic girl with relish but the story
is stale. Rita does a good job singing "The Heat Is
On." But in two other songs she performs, "Blue
Pacific Blues" and "Hear No Evil, See No Evil,"
her vocals are dubbed by Jo Ann Greer.

Sadie Thompson (Rita Hayworth) is a happy-go-lucky
San Francisco woman wanted on a morals charge there
and forced to flee her singing gig in a Honolulu
bordello over an incident involving a brawl. She's on
her way to take a nightclub singing job in New
Caledonia, but gets stuck for a week on a remote South
Pacific island with a marine garrison when the ship to
take her there gets quarantined. There she's
overwhelmed with love by the overbearing pit bull
marine Sergeant Phil O'Hara (Aldo Ray) and with hate
by Alfred Davidson (Jose Ferrer). He's a visiting
missionary layman, chairman of a missions board, who
is an intolerant religious bigot trying to reform
Sadie with his false pious platitudes after becoming
disgusted that she's the only white woman who stays up
late singing bawdy songs with a barroom full of ogling
marines. Davidson shows his true colors when he rapes
Sadie while pretending to help her and then kills
himself. In the meantime, O'Hara learns a lesson in
tolerance, as his love for Sadie overcomes his doubts
over her shady past. As for Sadie, she learns that she
can't keep running away from herself and finds
redemption in the sergeant's marriage proposal. It's
reduced to being more like a Doris Day flick than one
that should bother the Hays censors.

By de-glamorizing her character, Rita plays her with
oomph rather than as a bad woman. During filming, the
Love Goddess met singer Dick Haymes and married him;
the marriage only lasted two years, but she didn't
work on another film until Pal Joey some four years
later and she never regained her acting chops.